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gym

Our contemporary dance company has a training class 4 days a week. One out of four is a body conditioning class. We do a lot of cardio and weight training. Our rehearsal director has a lot of administrative works to do recently, so it is always me who has to lead this class. But not for the class 2 weeks ago. I asked my colleague to lead the class as I felt very tired and (I hate to admit that I also felt) lazy.

My colleague is a fantastic dancer with a lot of experiences. She joined the company around the same time as me. Just only because my English is better so my director let me lead the class (and rehearsals, sometimes) more often than her. Normally, in the body conditioning class which I led, I always felt her energy was a bit low or because she saved her energy, but not in this particular session. When she led the class, she was full of energy and could do more than what she normally did. What’s more, it was me who was not able to perform as good as how I normally was when I led the class. Every session, I could psych myself up before we started push-ups which I counted loudly for everyone, and I ended up with more energy at the end of the class than when we started. But for this session, that energy kept going down and down.

I asked my colleague after the class how she felt. Not surprising, she said she felt she had more energy than usual. What I learned from that day was that working out has a lot to do with mind. It’s a mental work as well as a physical work. When you know you are leading, you prepare your mind so you have enough energy for yourself and everyone under your leading. You call for 32 push-ups and hold in a plank position for 64 counts and you know that you can’t fail. The only choice you have is to complete it. You’ve prepared your mind.

So it is about mind. The mind has an absolute control over energy. If you don’t control your mind, it will control you (quoted from my Indian yoga teacher). It is the mind telling you that you can or cannot do. If you do it, you have to have already known that you CAN because it is the only way to succeed in that particular task. You don’t have to be a leader. You just really need to tell yourself that to complete the task is the only one choice you have.